Mika Lappalainen | Friday, 12 November 2021
I haven’t been able to fish for over month now. When you are not fishing, it is quite difficult to think about your techniques and so on. Past week we had wolf hunting again and I have been building extension to our winter fence. It has been busy week but last night when picking up my daughter from distance, I had time to think some things about my grayling fishing and how I might need to change it.
Our rivers are full of graylings under 35 cm, good amount from 35 to 40 cm and then some areas nicely +40 cm. I know that we have in some rivers around 50 cm and over that. I had seen those, some I had hooked but not landed. There is pretty similar rivers in Sweden and from those I have caught many around 50 cm graylings and some +50 cm. On those rivers I have fished similar kind spots than in ours, and caught big ones.
When we had world championships in here I was sure that they will caught some or at least few or even one 50 cm or plus. Biggest grayling was 48 cm so I started to think that our big graylings don’t hang similar spots than in Sweden. It feels funny and sounds strange but that is only conclusion I had made so far. Of course one reason is that we have different rules and you can take all +35 cm graylings but still.
So next summer to get that +50 grayling from here I need to re-think my fishing. I had to take risk that there will be trips with zero catch. That is just price to pay. I need to move my fishing out from my comfort zone, away from spots that I know everything about. I need to find spots and waters which are less fished, I need to find different type waters to find big one. I need to fish unknown waters, backwaters or slowly running water with deep spots. I had to reject my safety net and go to straight to deep end.
It will be difficult but luckily I had whole winter to do background search, reading maps etc. I have few spots in my mind allready. I know that this ”hunt” will be difficult, still it is worth to do. It doesn’t matter if I got that +50 cm grayling or not, I have still learned something and will improve my fishing. That’s why sometimes we all should jump out, take a risk and reach stars. Fishing is all about catching but to get better on that you need to got empty trips, that is when you are learning.
Have a nice weekend
Mika from Finland